Increasing Personal Efficiency

by Russell H. Conwell

Harmonious circumstances and appropriate environment are as essential for perfect effects in music as is the concord of sweet sounds. The foolish idea that music consists in screaming up to the highest C and growling down to the lowest B has misled many an amateur, and destroyed her helpfulness to a world that has far too much misery and far too little of the joy that comes from a sweet-voiced songster. The beginner in voice culture who attempts to wiggle her voice like a hired mourner, and with her tremulous effects sets the teeth of her audience on edge, has surely been misled into darkest delusion as to music, and will soon be lost amid the throng of vocal failures. Extremists are out of place anywhere, but the myriads of them in the musical world make humanity shudder.

What is needed in music to-day more than anything else is a standard of musical culture which shall demand careful discipline in all the influences that contribute to good music. True music is the music that always produces benign effects, the music that holds the attention of the auditor and permanently influences him to nobler thought, feeling, and action. Those large-hearted, artistic-souled men and women who are capable of interpreting into feeling what they have heard from voice or instrument must be the final court of appeal. A trapeze performance in acoustics is not music.

It has been frequently shown that music is potent in its effects upon the body as well as upon the soul. In 1901, a notable illustration of the power of music over disease was given at the Samaritan Hospital, connected with Temple University in Philadelphia, although the experiments were made under disadvantageous circumstances and environment. The patients were informed what the physicians were endeavoring to do, and the efforts of the first few months were wasted for the most part. Many of the patients who were placed under the influence of the music grew confident that they were going to be cured. While the recovery of some seemed miraculous, those who conducted the experiments felt that the healing might be largely due to the influence of the mind and not directly to the music. The matter was dropped for several months, until the patients were nearly all new cases. The doctors charged the nurses not to let the patients know for what cause the music was placed in the hospital. They eliminated also the personal influence of the nurses as well as the use of drugs at the time the music was produced. The experiment convinced those who conducted it that music has a powerful restorative effect even upon a person who is suffering from a combination of diseases. So many of the patients who recovered at that time from the influence of the music are alive and in good health to-day that common honesty disposes us to conclude that there is some undiscovered benefit in music which should be immediately investigated. This will never be attained by musical faddists or by selfish musicians who sing or perform for applause or money. Some plain, every day-man or woman will ultimately be the apostle of music for the people, and the experiments at Samaritan Hospital furnish only a suggestion of the resources of music which must soon be known to the world.

There was one patient in the hospital who had lost his memory through "softening of the brain." He lay most of the time unconscious, but occasionally talked irrationally upon all sorts of subjects. A quartet sang several pieces in his ward, but the nurses who sat upon each side of him noticed no effect whatever upon him until the quartet sang "My Old Kentucky Home." Then his eyes brightened and he began to hum the tune. Before they had finished the third verse, he asked the nurse about the singing, and requested the quartet to repeat the song. His intelligence seemed completely normal for a little while after the music ceased. He asked and answered questions clearly, but soon relapsed into his incoherent talk and listlessness.

When the man's lawyer heard of the effects upon the patient, he asked that the song might be sung while he was present, that he might then ask the patient about some very important papers of great value to the patient's family. As soon as the song was again sung by the quartet his intelligence returned. He informed the lawyer accurately as to the bank vault in which his box was locked, and told where he had left the keys in a private drawer of his desk.

Although the effect of the music was not permanent as to his case, many persons who know of it feel that some time music may be so applied as permanently to cure even such cases, if kept up for a sufficient length of time. Accidents to the skull, heart diseases, nervous exhaustion, and spinal ailments seem especially amenable to music. Two of the hospital cases of paralysis were permanently relieved by music. In one of these cases instrumental music seemed to produce a strong electric effect. While four violins were accompanied by an organ, the patient could use his feet and hands, but it was several weeks before he could walk without music. In the other case, vocal music put an insomnia patient to sleep, but after sleeping through the program, the patient was better; after a few trials he returned home.

Some of the hundred cases experimented upon were complete failures. But those conducting the experiments were convinced that the failure was attributable to the fact that they were unable to find the right kind of music. In the use of religious selections, "Pleyel's Hymn" made the patients of every ward worse; but "The Dead March" from Saul was soothing to typhoid patients. When this march was rendered softly, the nurses discovered that two cases had been so susceptible to the influences of the music that the physicians omitted the usual treatment and the patients recovered sooner than some other patients who had the disease in a less dangerous form.

Children were helped by a different class of music from that used with adults, and difference in sex also was noted. Mothers who sing to their children may become the best investigators as to the power of vocal music on the healthy development of childhood.

In the Baptist Temple, Philadelphia, several hymns were once forcefully rendered by the great chorus of the church to a congregation of three thousand people. At the close, slips of paper were passed to the worshipers, and they were asked to write upon the paper what thoughts the music had suggested to them. While there was nothing in the anthems suggestive of youth, and the burden of the stanzas seemed to divert from childhood, yet more than half of the two thousand slips returned attested that the hearer had been reminded of his schooldays and of the games of childhood; these slips were collected before the congregation had time to confer. It shows that the music was not in accord with the words, and that it had greater power upon the mind than the words had. It proves that, to produce its highest effects, sacred music must harmonize with the meaning of the words and with the environment. It also shows that the purpose for which one sings is an important factor—random vociferations or a display of vocal gymnastics even of the most cultured kind is both inartistic and unmusical.

These pages have been written to suggest that music is still with the common people; that the future blessings which mankind shall derive from musical art and science are probably dependent upon some observant person who is free from the trammels of misguided and misdirected culture, and who may come to it with an independent genius, and handle the subject in the light of every-day common-sense.